Profiling Risk and Sustainability in Coastal Deltas of the World

Z.D. Tessler, C.J. Vörösmarty, M. Grossberg, I. Gladkova, H. Aizenman, J.P.M. Syvitski, E. Foufoula-Georgiou. Profiling Risk and Sustainability in Coastal Deltas of the World. Science349(6248), 638-643 (2015) doi:10.1126/science.aab3574.

*Correspondence to:

Abstract: Deltas are highly sensitive to increasing risks arising from local human activities, land subsidence, regional water management, global sea-level rise, and climate extremes. We quantified changing flood risk due to extreme events using an integrated set of global environmental, geophysical, and social indicators. Although risks are distributed across all levels of economic development, wealthy countries effectively limit their present-day threat by gross domestic product-enabled infrastructure and coastal defense investments. In an energy-constrained future, such protections will probably prove to be unsustainable, raising relative risks by four to eight times in the Mississippi and Rhine deltas and by one-and-a-half to four times in the Chao Phraya and Yangtze deltas. The current emphasis on short-term solutions for the world’s deltas will greatly constrain options for designing sustainable solutions in the long term.

References and Notes:

  1. C. D. Woodroffe, R. J. Nicholls, Y. Saito, Z. Chen, S. L. Goodbred, in Global Change and Integrated Coastal Management. N. Harvey, Ed. (2006), pp. 277–314.
  2. M. VanKoningsveld, J. P. M. Mulder, M. J. F. Stive, L. VanDerValk, A. W. VanDerWeck, Living with sea-level rise and climate change: a case study of the Netherlands. J. Coastal Res. 242, 367–379 (2008).
  3. J. Day, D. Boesch, E. Clairain, G. Kemp, Restoration of the Mississippi Delta: lessons from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Science 315, 1679–84 (2007).
  4. J. P. M. Syvitski, Y. Saito, Morphodynamics of deltas under the influence of humans. Global Planet. Change 57, 261–282 (2007).
  5. J. P. Ericson, C. J. Vorosmarty, S. L. Dingman, L. G. Ward, M. Meybeck, Effective sea-level rise and deltas: causes of change and human dimension implications. Global Planet. Change 50, 63–82 (2006).
  6. C. J. Vörösmartyet al., Anthropogenic sediment retention: major global impact from registered river impoundments. Global and Planet. Change 39, 169–190 (2003).
  7. H. J. Wang et al., Stepwise decreases of the Huanghe (Yellow River) sediment load (1950–2005): Impacts of climate change and human activities, Glob. Planet. Change 57, 331-354 (2007).
  8. J. P. M. Syvitskiet al., Sinking deltas due to human activities. Nat. Geosci. 2, 681–686 (2009).
  9. S. Mazzotti, A. Lambert, M. Van der Kooij, A. Mainville, Impact of anthropogenic subsidence on relative sea-level rise in the Fraser River delta. Geology 37, 771–774 (2009).
  10. S. Higgins, I. Overeem, A. Tanaka, J. P. M. Syvitski, Land subsidence at aquaculture facilities in the Yellow River delta, China. Geophys. Res. Lett. 40, 3898–3902 (2013).
  11. T. R. Knutson et al., Tropical cyclones and climate change. Nat. Geosci. 3, 157–163 (2010).
  12. B. P. Horton, S. Rahmstorf, S. E. Engelhart, A. C. Kemp, Expert assessment of sea-level rise by AD 2100 and AD 2300. Quat. Sci. Rev. 84, 1–6 (2014).
  13. F. G. Renaud et al., Tipping from the Holocene to the Anthropocene: How threatened are major world deltas? Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustainability 5, 644–654 (2013).
  14. J. W. Day, M. Moerschbaecher, D. Pimentel, C. Hall, A. Yáñez-Arancibia, Sustainability and place: How emerging mega-trends of the 21st century will affect humans and nature at the landscape level. Ecol. Eng. 65, 33–48 (2014).
  15. S. Temmermanet al., Ecosystem-based coastal defence in the face of global change, Nature 504, 79-83 (2013).
  16. Landscapes on the Edge: New Horizons for Research on Earth’s Surface. (National Research Council of the National Academies, Washington, DC, 2010).
  17. N. Brooks, W. N. Adger, P. M. Kelly, The determinants of vulnerability and adaptive capacity at the national level and the implications for adaptation. Global Environ. Change 15, 151–163 (2005).
  18. V. Gornitz, Global coastal hazards from future sea level rise, Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclimatol. Palaeoecol. 84, 379-398 (1991).
  19. B. Halpern, S. Walbridge, K. Selkoe, A global map of human impact on marine ecosystems. Science 948 (2008).
  20. C. J. Vörösmartyet al., Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity. Nature 467, 555–561 (2010).
  21. D. L. Balk et al., Determining global population distribution: methods, applications and data. Adv. Parasit. 62, 119-156 (2006).
  22. S. Cutter, Vulnerability to environmental hazards. Prog. Hum. Geog. 20, 529–539 (1996).
  23. C. J. Vörösmartyet al., Extreme rainfall, vulnerability and risk: a continental-scale assessment for South America. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London, Ser. A 371, (2013).
  24. Y. Budiyono, J. Aerts, J. Brinkman, M. A. Marfai,. P. Ward, Flood risk assessment for delta mega-cities: a case study of Jakarta. Nat. Hazards 75, 389–413 (2015).
  25. Y. C. E. Yang, P. A. Ray, C. M. Brown, A. F. Khalil, W. H. Yu, Estimation of flood damage functions for river basin planning: a case study in Bangladesh. Nat. Hazards 75, 2773–2791 (2015).
  26. T. Bucx, M. Marchand, B. Makaske, C. van de Guchte, “Comparative assessment of the vulnerability and resilience of 10 deltas - synthesis report” (Delft-Wageningen, The Netherlands, 2010).
  27. P. Kabatet al., Dutch coasts in transition. Nat. Geosci. 2, 450-452 (2009).
  28. US Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2015 (DOE/EIA-0554, 2015).
  29. R. Dankerset al., First look at changes in flood hazard in the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project ensemble.,Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 111, 3257–61 (2014).
  30. S. Jevrejeva, J. C. Moore, A. Grinsted, A. P. Matthews, G. Spada, Trends and acceleration in global and regional sea levels since 1807. Global Planet. Change 113, 11–22 (2014).
  31. K. C. Seto, B. Güneralp, L. R. Hutyra, Global forecasts of urban expansion to 2030 and direct impacts on biodiversity and carbon pools. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 109, 16083–8 (2012).
  32. C. Kuenzeret al., Understanding the impact of hydropower developments in the context of upstream–downstream relations in the Mekong river basin. Sustainability Sci. 8, 565–584 (2012).
  33. C. Zarfl, A. E. Lumsdon, J. Berlekamp, L. Tydecks, K. Tockner, A global boom in hydropower dam construction. Aquat. Sci. 77, (2015).
  34. Z.W. Kundzewicz, I. Pińskwar, G.R. Brakenridge, Large floods in Europe, 1985-2009, Hydrolog. Sci. J. 58, 1-7 (2013).
  35. J. E. Vermaat, M. A. Eleveld, Divergent options to cope with vulnerability in subsiding deltas. Clim. Change 117, 31–39 (2013).
  36. B. M. Fekete, C. J. Vörösmarty, R. B. Lammers, Scaling gridded river networks for macroscale hydrology: development, analysis, and control of error. Water Resour. Res. 37, 1955–1967 (2001).
  37. B. Lehneret al., High-resolution mapping of the world’s reservoirs and dams for sustainable river-flow management. Front. Ecol. Environ. 9, 494–502 (2011).
  38. C. D. Elvidgeet al., Global distribution and density of constructed impervious surfaces. Sensors 7, 1962–1979 (2007).
  39. Y. Wada, L. P. H. van Beek, M. F. P. Bierkens, Nonsustainable groundwater sustaining irrigation: a global assessment. Water Resour. Res. 48, (2012).
  40. USGS World Energy Assessment Team, U. S. Geological Survey World Petroleum Assessment 2000 – Description and Results. (USGS Energy Team, Denver, CO, 2000).
  41. B. R. A. Morton, J. C. Bernier, J. A. Barras, N. F. Ferina, “Rapid subsidence and historical wetland loss in the Mississippi Delta plain: likely causes and future implications.” (U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2005-1216, 2005).
  42. J. A. Church, N. J. White, R. Coleman, K. Lambeck, J. X. Mitrovica, Estimates of the regional distribution of sea level rise over the 1950-2000 period. J. Clim. 17, 2609–2625 (2004).
  43. European Environment Agency, “Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2012” (EEA Report No. 12/2012, 2012), p. 104.
  44. J. Pethick, J. D. Orford, Rapid rise in effective sea-level in southwest Bangladesh: its causes and contemporary rates. Glob. Planet. Change 111, 237–245 (2013).
  45. D. Wisser, B. Fekete, C. J. Vörösmarty, A. Schumann, Reconstructing 20th century global hydrography: a contribution to the Global Terrestrial Network-Hydrology (GTN-H). Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 14, 1–24 (2010).
  46. T. Durrant, M. Hemer, C. Trenham, D. Greenslade, CAWCR Wave Hindcast 1979-2010. (2013), doi:10.4225/08/523168703DCC5.
  47. M. Dilley et al., “Natural disaster hotspots: a global risk analysis.” (Disaster Risk Management Series No. 5, The World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005).
  48. G. Egbert, S. Erofeeva, Efficient inverse modeling of barotropic ocean tides. J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol. 19, 183–204 (2002).
  49. E. R. Thieler, E. S. Hammar-Klose, “National Assessment of Coastal Vulnerability for the U.S. Atlantic Coast.” (U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 99-593, 1999).
  50. W. Nordhaus, New metrics for environmental economics: Gridded economic data. The Integrated Assessment Journal 8, 73–84 (2008).
  51. D. Kaufmann, A. Kraay, M. Mastruzzi, The Worldwide Governance Indicators: methodology and analytical issues. Hague Journal on the Rule of Law 3, 220–246 (2011).
  52. M. L. Carroll, J. R. Townshend, C. M. DiMiceli, P. Noojipady, R. A. Sohlberg, A new global raster water mask at 250 m resolution, Int. J. Digital Earth 2, 291–308 (2009).